I remain haunted by the death of Aaron Swartz. In fact, his passing is still one of the first things I mention to people when I want to provide an example of how out of control and drunk on power the government is. Theincredible accomplishments he achieved in his short life are nothing short of extraordinary, and the fact the feds mercilessly attacked him and drove him to suicide epitomizes the unfortunate rapid decline of our culture and civilization. Amazingly, Aaron continues to bless the world with gifts from his brilliant mind even after his passing. In this case I am referring to Strongbox, an encrypted and more secure way of providing information to journalists. It was a project Aaron was working on with Kevin Poulsen before his death and was launched by the New Yorker a few days ago.

The New Yorker has announced a new anonymous document sharing system called Strongbox, that will allow people to anonymously and securely submit documents to reporters from the New Yorker. Other publications have tried to set up something like this — often inspired by Wikileaks — but for the most part, they’ve been full of security holes, sometimes big and serious ones. What may be more interesting than the fact that this system is being set up is the story behind it. It’s based on DeadDrop, an open source system that was put together by Aaron Swartz and Kevin Poulsen.